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scythe

>Please don't break down into some 'but animals die all the time in the wild,' argument.

Yeah, let's not bring up a totally valid objection!

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Please expand on how it's valid.

[edit] I'm being open to debate here, but instead of debate, I get down votes? Is that really what HN is about? [/edit]

All animals are in one way or another a food source for other animals. It is in no way evil if an animal suffers unless that suffering is intentionally caused by a human. Our sin is in the mass production and mis-treatment of livestock while they are alive, not in the actual killing or eating.

Not eating mass-produced chicken or wearing leather makes sense, refusing free-range eggs or seafood does not. Not that there can be any real debate over an issue that predominately comes down to personal opinion. Always better to do what you are comfortable with and allow others to do the same.

You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement. No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Since you posit that huamn beings can infer the feelings of animals I posit that animals prefer to be factory farmed than spend what existence the animal has being constantly chased by predators. Therefore wearing leather and eating mass-produced chicken makes perfect sense and is in tune with the feelings of the animal.

  > You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement.
  > No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Does the lack of knowledge of their living preferences somehow bolster the argument that it's ok to factory-farm them though?

You can't make the decision one way or the other.

  "Monks, these two extremes ought not to be
  practiced by one who has gone forth from
  the household life. (What are the two?) There
  is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures,
  which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary
  people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there
  is addiction to self-mortification, which is
  painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding
  both these extremes, the Tathagata (the
  Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it
  gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to
  calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to
  Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized
  by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold
  path, and nothing else, namely: right
  understanding, right thought, right speech,
  right action, right livelihood, right effort,
  right mindfulness and right concentration."
  - Siddhārtha Gautama, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

While we can't be sure to of the preferences of livestock, we can make pretty good guesses. If the responses of animals in a factory farm are more similar to the responses of an animal that is being injured than an animal that is not being interacted with, then the posterior probability of the factory farm situation being dis-preferred by the animal is reasonably high.

Factory farming or "wild" existence is a false dichotomy. There is the option of having pastured animals. And, critically, there is the option of not existing at all. Furthermore, I'd suggest that domesticated animals are different enough from their wild forebears that spending their existence being chased by predators isn't the default "non-factory farm" option.

From what I know of factory farms, pastured animal husbandry, and the probable preference functions of animals, I would guess the preferences would be: pasturing > non-existence > factory farm

largely from The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

But does anyone know, without any doubt, the living preferences of a potato or an apple tree?

> You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement. No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Can you infer the feelings of other humans? If you're willing to accept human communication like speech to answer "no, I don't need to", but are unwilling to accept communication like adult cows being willing to go through physical pain in order to stay with their calves when the calves are being taken away, I think you have a speciesist arbitrary-line problem going on here.

We can make some guesses. See e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...

  > free-range eggs or seafood does not

Personally:

1. Eating seafood supports the over-fishing of our water-ways.

2. The 'free-range' label, IIRC, only requires that the animals have 15 minutes of time outside of their cramped cages. It's not a huge improvement.

3. In general, when they are hatching new chickens for egg-laying they sort out all of the male chicks and then kill them. Industry-standard practice is to put them into garbage bags and suffocate them, or to toss them (in garbage bags) into a wood-chipper.

4. Egg-laying hens are only kept alive as long as their production is at a certain level. As soon as it drops below a certain level they are called 'spent hens,' and killed.

Pyre,

this morning, I woke up to this submission. Going trough my morning routine and walking to work, I completely felt bad. For the first time, I feel bad to be part of HN due to many illogical and harmful statements.

What I'm going to say is: Thank you for encouraging intelligent conversation in these threads. I'm giving each and every comment an upvote.

This is really not a valid objection. It is fairly well studied, and it's known as an "appeal to nature." You can see some info on it at these places:

* http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

It's largely ignored in philosophical discussions because of the issues mentioned in these pages (and more!).

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